One of the five books I read over the seven days of my cruise was The Comfort Crisis. I wasn’t sure about it. I felt it could be one of those extreme ‘life-changing’ zeitgeist books that recommend you ditch large elements of your life and climb Everest.
It was nothing like that and it was substantially more interesting as a result. It made me realise I am in a comfort crisis.
What is the comfort crisis?
The theory is simple. We exist in a world that, for large tracts of society, has the impact of putting us in relative comfort compared to our ancestors. I get it, people reading this will come up with all sorts of whataboutism about people on the poverty line, the cost of living crises, people dealing with mental health issues, etc. At the same time, I acknowledged I’m always in danger of moving from my bed to various chairs and back to bed again with my only active engagement being work.
The books put forward research that we thrive on challenges. If we are deluged under them and are drowning it can lead to mental health issues, but similarly not experiencing any has its own catalogue of problems around a lack of resilience.
As human beings, we need ‘just enough challenge’.
My comfort crisis
Reading the book I realised I’ve experienced cycles of comfort, positive discomfort and negative discomfort. As an example, my divorce was definitely negative discomfort. Similarly, the period in 2008 when I experienced long periods of unemployment. These represented times when, for me, the discomfort was so oppressive it impacted my mental health.
Studying for the MBA was challenging, at times scarily so, but it was a quintessential positive discomfort. Once I got over the divorce I had a period of positive discomfort where I was trying new things like YouTube (which changed me significantly and gave me new skills) and I went on a number of bolder travel adventures.
I’m currently in a comfort crisis and I’ve been in one since the pandemic started. I’m not being particularly challenged. What does this comfort crises look like?
A team of scientists in Isreal, across six studied, surveyed groups of people doing things that were new or old to them. “In all the studies,” the scientists wrote, “we found that…people remember duration as being shorter on a routine activity than on a nonroutine activity.”
The Comfort Crises
Where does the time go? Time goes by at a scarily fast rate and this has started to bother me as I have less and less of it left. People suggest this is a function of age. I’m not convinced. This book has me thinking it’s how I spend it. I let time slink by passively, this means one week blurs into another. I feel a week on holiday is longer than a typical week because I’m present in every moment. A normal week can feel like when you drive somewhere you’re familiar with but your brain has no conscious sense of time or how you got there. My week on the cruise felt longer, I did more and my perception of time-shifted. Why? Because I was more actively present and my experiences were not routine.
I eat badly. Okay, not totally disastrously but it ain’t great either. I still have at least one take-out a week. I eat way too much chocolate. I definitely, as the book suggests, eat because it’s nice rather than because I truly need all that food or because I’m hungry.
My fitness has reversed. I reached a level of fitness in 2019 that, while not amazing, was a peak. I could even run 5K! The pandemic has really seen it slide. What scares me isn’t my current lack of fitness but what it means for the future. Fitness increases your immune system and reduces your chance of heart attack, cancer, strokes and being as brittle as a biscuit when you’re 60+.
It’s primarily these three things that bug me as they all have the potential to shorten my life either because it’s whizzing by too fast as my brain isn’t focused and present and thus I’m not entering ‘creative bullet time’ or because I might be literally shortening it due to not being as healthy as I can be.
Death by loneliness
Scientists Brigham Young University found that it doesn’t matter how old you are or how much money you have , being lonely increases your risk of dying in the next seven years by 26 percent. Overall, it can shorten your life by 15 years. That’s the equivalent to smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day.
The Comfort Crisis
Holy shit. Here is me thinking the fact I don’t smoke or drink gives me enhanced odds of living longer. Apparently, it doesn’t matter, loneliness is going to kill me just as effectively! That’s probably what other people think about me if they were aware of the above statistics.
The issue is I know better.
“Being alone is actually just a state; it means that you are not with other people. Loneliness is an emotion, which describes a feeling of sadness attributed to not having connection.”
Sarah Adler, PsyD
I recognise I am in the state of being alone if you don’t count a canine, but the feeling and emotion of loneliness does not come with it and it hasn’t for the past seven years. I’ve literally never sat back and briefly thought I’m lonely or had any extended existential crises. Even during post-divorce challenges it wasn’t loneliness as such. Why? Because I have an amazing ability to exist within my own head!
This is not true of all people, within an infinitesimal moment of being in the state of being alone they are at risk of metaphorically chain-smoking that loneliness and going stir crazy.
As an introvert, I think the opposite.
Building the capacity to be alone probably makes your interactions with others richer. Because you’re bringing to the relationship a person whos actually got stuff going on inside and isnt’ just a connector circtui that only thrives off of others.”
The Comfort Crisis, Michael Easter
I tend to think my ability to be alone without being lonely increased my resilience, because if there is anything that is true I have a deep understanding of myself and thoughts on the things I consume and create. I always have thoughts to share if I think it’s worth it. Even down to thoughts on why you don’t ask an introvert what they do in their spare time. I’m fascinated with people and if the conversation goes beyond small talk I’m all in. I just don’t need it.
So we can put this to one side with respect to my comfort crisis.
Shifts in mental state
The lasting shifts in happiness I’ve experienced haven’t come from anything societally imposed. Not money, degrees, titles, jobs, stuff. They’ve come from shifts in my mental state.
The Comfort Crisis
I’ve hedged around this issue in the past but I’ve probably not explained it directly, but the above quote rings true.
All my significant shifts in happiness are due to a shift in my mental state.
It’s why when I am travelling I often make significant life decisions. It’s why I spent 3.5 years doing an MBA. The value in doing the MBA wasn’t for money, letters after my name or a better job but the value in going through the process. Why? Because it was going through the process that provided a shift in my mental state and changed me permanently.
Solving the comfort crisis
Good question. To answer I think I’d pose myself the question below.
How can I make the mental state that allows me to read five books in seven days my permanent state?
I’ve tried to do this in the past as this is why I purchase the campervan! I purchased it in the hope of having that environment break more often – every weekend and five 9-day holidays a year. The plan has worked brilliantly on the long trips, less so on the weekends.
Focusing on travel is wrong, as it naturally limits opportunities. I need to find a way to enter the correct mental state every day in my house. That is the only solution.
How do I do this? I’m only starting to think about it, but I think the key thing is I’ve shifted how I think about how might life feels at the moment. I used to think it was an outcome, I now think it’s the cause which is a really interesting way of thinking about it.
It’s about realising environment is important as it influences how I spend my time. It’s about recognising that I do use food like a mild drug. It’s not about what I eat so much as why I eat. I literally eat less on holiday when I’m using more energy than I do at home! It’s clear the amount of energy you spend and how much you eat is a correlation, not a direct causation.
And yes, travel will be part of this. I’m not 100% sure what shape this will take. I think my views of how I want to spend my travel time are changing post-pandemic for a number of reasons but I did enjoy leaving the country recently.
And, Finally…
It’s interesting finding a book that really makes you think and I highly recommend The Comfort Crisis. It’s got interesting ideas. It’s well constructed with the parallel set-up of its ideas and the adventure the author went on.
It’s one of those ‘shake yourself up a bit’ books that does it without telling you to ditch your life wholesale. It just suggests you should reduce the comfort and introduce some challenges and changes that shift your mental state.
That’s the key.